


Save Me from My Rocking Boat

by amoergosum



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 06:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13875294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoergosum/pseuds/amoergosum
Summary: Jamie takes losses hard. Tyler makes it better.





	Save Me from My Rocking Boat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CitrusVanille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CitrusVanille/gifts).



It’s about halfway through the season, and the Stars are finishing their season series against the Golden Knights at home. It’s been a fast-paced, hard-hitting game, and the boys are radiating crazy, rage-like energy on the bench. It’s games like these that Tyler loves the most. Breathing hard, dripping sweat, legs shaking from exertion, and not feeling any of it, just thinking about the next shift, and getting the puck on his stick, and being faster than anyone trying to take him down. He’s moving like a demon tonight—they all are. They need these two points. He remembers hearing Jamie’s post-game a couple nights ago, hearing the quiet self-deprecation as Jamie, as always, blamed himself for taking penalties and the costly power play goals against them. Jamie’s the sort of captain who always puts their losses on himself, and Tyler really hates it. There’s nothing you can say to Jamie, no amount of “we win as a team, we lose as a team” that can keep him from completely internalizing every loss, obsessively poring over tape, even (against all advice) reading analysis. Tyler hates it when Jamie gets stuck in his head like this. It’s not that Tyler himself is any less invested, any less upset by a win, but for whatever reason, it just doesn’t sit so heavy, feel so _personal_ , for him. Not like Jamie. He’s not exactly sure why, though he has his guesses, but no one else’s unhappiness really distresses Tyler like Jamie’s. He just wants to see the guy happy.

In the end, they drop the game. It was close—each goal against quickly answered through the first two periods, but they just can’t get ahead. It’s never good when they’re chasing. Hitch is looking especially purple behind the bench, and nobody is going to want to meet Bish’s eyes in the locker room. Not a great night. All Tyler wants to do is shower, get dressed, go home, and take another, longer shower, the kind during which all of life’s intricacies are condensed down to scalding hot water washing everything away and leaving him raw and empty. With that in mind Tyler heads into the locker room, head down and quiet. Media’s around, but he knows he won’t be asked to talk to anyone tonight. Jamie will, though. Tyler starts stripping off his pads on the way to his stall, hoping not to hear that sad, small voice again tonight. He knows it’s a long shot.

_“Yeah, you know, we just, uh, it starts with myself and it’s just not good enough... you gotta lead the way if you’re gonna be the captain. I’m not doing it right now…”_

So. It’s going to be another one of those nights.

Tyler makes eye contact with Jason, the only other guy near enough to really hear Jamie. Jason gave him a slow head shake, as if to say _I know, man, he sounds rough._ Tyler sits back in his stall and runs his hands down his face, thinking. They have the next few nights off, not playing again until Monday night in New York City. He’s sure everyone’s just going to head home, mope or chew on the game on their own couches away from everyone else for the night. He thinks again about the long shower he was planning, and the three very soft, very sweet dogs he was planning to squeeze between afterward. Then he sighs, walks over to Jamie’s stall where the man in question is ripping his gear off like it’s burning him, and says, low enough that only Jamie would hear, “Chubbs. Come over tonight.”

“Nah, not in the mood, man.”

“Dude. That wasn’t a request. Do whatever you gotta do at home, then come to my house,” he says firmly, already walking off toward the showers. Maybe Jamie would make this easy and just do what he was told. Just in case, though, Tyler opts to shower as quickly as possible, throw his suit back on, and wait for Jamie in Spezza’s stall.

A few minutes later Jamie comes back out to get dressed looking pink and warm, toweling his hair dry. The anger seems to have gone from his face, and he just looks despondent, exhausted. Tyler locks his phone and shoves it back in his suit pocket. Jamie dodges around him to grab his clothes, and Tyler reaches out to poke him in the side.

“Hey. Wanna get takeout on the way home? I’m feeling burgers.”

“Segs. I told you, I’m not in the mood. Just gonna go home and crash,” Jamie mumbles, buttoning his shirt and shuffling toward his shoes.

“You can crash at my house, like I said. You need to eat, right? Me too. Food, then sleep,” Tyler says, standing to lean against the wall across from him.

“Let me live,” Jamie sighs, sounding slightly less ornery and defeated. Good.

“I have three awesome pups and a comfy ass guest bed. Come onnnnn,” Tyler whines, knowing he’s already won, poking him again like the brat he is.

Jamie squirms away, then stands to shrug into his jacket. “Whatever, Segs, get the fuck off me. I want Gator’s,” Jamie declares.

Tyler smiles, knowing he’s being tested. “Fine, I’ll pick it up and meet you at mine in like an hour. _Don’t bail_.”

Jamie picks up his bag and starts to walk away, turning back to say, “yeah, fine, whatever,” before throwing himself bodily into the crash bar of the locker room door and walking out into the hall.

Tyler laughs, not even mad about having to go downtown, and pulls out his phone to call in the order before following after Jamie.

_/  * \\_  * _/  * \\_  * _/  * \\_  * _/  * \\_ *  _/  * \\_ *  _/  * \\_ *  _/  * \\_  * _/  * \\_

Tyler turns into his driveway not long later, pleased because it turns out Gator’s delivers. Sure, the delivery fee’s more than the cost of the two burgers he ordered, but at least he doesn’t have to fight through the crowd at the bar to pick up his order, knowing full well that he’d likely be recognized. He definitely isn’t in the mood for fans with pity in their eyes, and “good game tonight, you’ll get ‘em next time.” He just wants to eat burgers with his bro, cuddle on the couch (with his dogs, obviously), and go the fuck to bed. And if he can distract Jamie into a better mood, even just by annoying him half to death, that’d be pretty cool too.

He lets himself into the house, spends about a minute being jumped and slobbered on by Cash and Gerry while Marshall supervises from a safe distance, then heads toward the kitchen, dropping his bag and keys in the hall. He grabs the dogs’ food bags from under the sinks, then pours it out into the bowls under the island while his babies watch from the threshold in the hall, like they’re supposed to. He loves it when they behave. Makes him look good as a dad, makes him so proud.

“Boys, we’re having company tonight. Uncle Jamie’s coming, and I’mma need y’all to be extra nice to him. Like, all the cuddles and all the puppy kisses, ‘kay?” he says, in that special voice reserved just for his babies. The dogs stare at him excitedly, sitting quite nicely, waiting for their signal. He giggles, then relents. “Fine. Mangia!” They crash into each other in their haste to get through the doorway and toward their bowls, and Tyler knows he has lost his audience entirely.

He grabs a beer out of the fridge then heads upstairs to change into sweats. If he doesn’t bail, Jamie should be by in about twenty minutes, and the food delivery should be right behind him. That gives him just enough time to let the dogs out, get into comfy clothes and pull up Netflix, find a couple options for the night. He’s scrolling through the “Feel Good Family Movies” subsection when he hears the front door being unlocked. Good. He’s glad Jamie’s actually here—not that he expected him to just ghost, but he’d half expected a text just saying Jamie was sorry but he wasn’t coming after all. He guesses Jamie really wants that burger.

He hears steps coming toward him, hears a voice calling out, “feeeeed meeeeee.” Then Jamie throws himself onto the couch next to him, causing Tyler to bounce into the middle of the couch nearly onto Jamie’s lap.  Tyler grins over at Jamie and says brightly, “Hi.”

Jamie snorts, but gives Tyler a tiny smile in response. “Hi. Burger?”

“It’s coming,” Tyler tells him, shimmying a bit to sit properly beside him—still close enough to touch, but not quite draped all over him. “I got them to deliver.”

“Cheater,” Jamie responds, chuckling.

“Whatever, it should be here in like 30 seconds. Wanna watch something?” Tyler asks, picking the TV remote back up.

They settle on Elf, which is definitely a concession on Tyler’s part because Will Ferrell is obnoxious. Jamie seems into it, though, the Christmas-loving loser he is, and this was Tyler’s aim, after all. Just wants his bud to chill, eat good food, share in the puppy snuggles, and get a good night’s sleep without succumbing to whatever self-flagellation ritual he’d be doing at home right now. Probably reading the recaps, watching NHL Network, replaying video of his shifts over and over. It stresses Tyler out even considering it. Yeah, they all go through it, the slumps and the self-doubt, but he’s getting to the point where he doesn’t remember the last time Jamie looked anything but haggard and tense. He’s glad Jamie’s here. Nobody does self-care like Tyler Seguin.

Their food arrives, and they sit and eat quietly for a little while, Jamie totally engrossed in the movie and Tyler totally engrossed in watching Jamie enjoying it. Because he just likes seeing his bro looking so relaxed for once. Every so often Jamie looks over when something (supposedly) funny happens, and Tyler has to pretend he was paying attention, and laugh with him. By now, Marshall and Cash are up on the couch too, Cash leaning all the way over Tyler’s lap to nose at Jamie’s thigh for attention. _Good boy,_ Tyler thinks. _Get all the cuddles that I can’t._

Okay, so, Tyler knows that he could just, like, lean more fully against Jamie’s shoulder, or put an arm behind him on the couch, or shift his leg slightly closer, or something. He’s a tactile guy and everyone close to him knows it—Jamie particularly has always been a favored target of Tyler’s physical affection, to the constant amusement of basically everyone they both know. So why is Tyler feeling so awkward about it right now? He sits thinking about it for a second, watching the lights from the TV flicker across Jamie’s face in profile. If he’s actively thinking about wanting to cuddle with his best bro, and is pre-meditating said cuddles, that seems pretty pointed, right? He thinks about Jamie, and how good he feels when Jamie’s around, and how much better he feels when Jamie seems happy, especially when he does that adorable thing where he looks down and half-smiles—

Okay, this makes a lot of sense, actually. He thinks Jamie is adorable. That’s pretty objectively true, but now that he thinks about it, his camera roll is pretty heavy on screenshots of Jamie’s Instagram stories and promotional shots from the team’s social media accounts. He especially likes shots of him looking happy, especially when Tyler’s also in the pictures, and he knows he’s the one who said whatever got a laugh out of his generally stoic best friend. And he wants to touch him, differently, apparently, from the way he always wants to touch everyone he knows. Signs point to Tyler being into Jamie. Cool. Now that he’s named it, in his head anyway, he can stop angsting about it. Pleased with this revelation, he decides to tune back into the movie, but a few mind-numbing seconds later, he looks over to find Jamie… looking right back at him. Huh. Jamie’s face, or what he can see of it in the mostly dark living room, is turned toward Tyler, squinting and chewing on his bottom lip like he’s thinking hard. Tyler’s stomach sinks, and he wonders if Jamie had caught him staring, if he was uncomfortable now.

“Tyler?” Jamie asks, voice low.

_Shit,_ Tyler thinks. He turns fully to face him, partly dislodging Cash, who grunts out his disapproval and climbs right back over Tyler to curl up with Marshall. He should say something. He should just act like he’s falling asleep, blame it on being tired, not make this weird. He should—

“Tyler,” Jamie repeats, also shifting to face him. They’re sitting so close. Tyler should move back. He should _fucking say something_ and stop being so awkward before Jamie realizes what’s happening in Tyler’s brain, and therefore all over his fucking face, and before it’s too late to act like he wasn’t just _staring at his bro like he wants to eat him_. Jamie takes a breath, looks like he’s about to speak, and Tyler just… he can’t deal with Jamie possibly saying anything serious right now. He’s starting to hyperventilate, and he’s hot, and he’s sure he’s bright red and it’s super obvious and Jamie’s probably about to let him down gently, assert his heterosexuality and hightail it out of there, and Tyler just cannot deal with Jamie leaving, so after another second of angsting he lets out a gust of breath and flops forward and just. Lands on Jamie’s face. With his face. In some sort of approximation of a kiss, maybe, if you can count two mouths not really moving and one kisser kind of having a panic attack onto the other kisser (kissee?) as a kiss. Another second, then Tyler starts to pull away and considers fleeing the scene, but Jamie huffs out a laugh right into his face, and starts to pull him back, except Jamie’s breath tastes like onions and jalapeños from his burger, which is fucking hilarious, and Tyler starts giggling too, and now they’re just laughing into each other’s faces with gross breath. Unfortunately, since Tyler is still kinda full of adrenaline from his freak-out, the giggles turn into full on wheezing laughter, and Jamie went from quiet chuckling to looking a little concerned, but Tyler can’t. Stop. Laughing.

Jamie waits patiently for Tyler to get a grip, a small smile on his face, and finally Tyler slumps forward to bury his face in Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie’s arm immediately comes up around him and that’s… nice. He doesn’t want to look up, afraid he might start freaking out again. He’s just sort of hunched over, feeling very cozy and strangely comfortable considering his odd posture, and waits for Jamie to say something.

“Segs,” Jamie whispers, “were you, like, freaking out about wanting to kiss me, before? Or was that just, like, a coincidence?”

Tyler leans back a bit, just enough to free his mouth from Jamie’s soft hoodie. “I think so, yeah,” he whispers back, then tips forward to hide his face again.

“Do you want to do it again?” Jamie whispers, sounding a little unsure.

“Do _you_?” Tyler says, a little louder, pulling back to look at him.

“I mean, yeah, I was kinda hoping… but then you started laughing, and I didn’t know what that was about, and—”

“—oh my God, Chubbs, I wasn’t laughing because kissing you was funny, I was laughing at your stank-ass breath!” Tyler wheezes out, starting to lose it again.

Jamie scrunches his face up like he wants to be offended, but it’s honestly just too funny, and he starts laughing again too, and spits out, “you too! I just didn’t want to make you feel bad!”

A few seconds later, Tyler side-eyes Jamie, and asks, “Wait. So, how long have you been, like, open to that being a thing that could happen?”

Jamie’s quiet for a second, and Tyler worries that this is just entirely too awkward, and he might be breaking this dude’s brain with feelings-talk. He turns to sit more comfortably next to him, pressed together from shoulder to knee, content to just move on. But then Jamie says, in a very small voice that Tyler has to strain to hear, “I don’t know, actually? When you told me to come over, it kinda felt like you were making a move, and I think I just realized I might be into it right then. But then I got here and you were all normal, and I forgot about it—”

“—you _forgot_ about it? About wanting me to kiss you?”

“I mean, no, but I forgot that it was a thing I’d been thinking about, until I looked over during Elf and you were kinda staring at me, the way you look at girls sometimes when we’re out, before you go hit on them,” he finishes, sounding embarrassed.

Tyler laughs, and says, “Really? I have an actual, categorized look?”

“Yup. To be fair, Jordie pointed it out first, but now me and half the team can tell when you’re about to go for it,” he responds proudly.

“That. Is. Fucking. _Hilarious,_ ” Tyler nearly shouts, still laughing.

They’re both quiet for a few moments, and then Tyler says, “I honestly had no idea it was a thing I would want until today. I wasn’t angling for anything when I invited you over. You just seemed so down, and I hated it, and I wanted to try to cheer you up.”

Jamie sighs, rubs a hand down his beard. “Yeah, tonight kinda sucked, up until I got here.”

“No kidding.”

“But you know how it is for me, after a loss,” Jamie mumbles, sounding a bit defensive.

“It’s been like this for a _while_ , Jame. You take it really hard, dude, and it kinda scares us? Me. It scares me. You sound so… depressed, lately,” Tyler finishes, then leans back to rest his head on Jamie’s shoulder, suddenly needing more contact.

Jamie doesn’t say anything right away, and Tyler frowns. “Chubbs. Is something else going on?”

“No… I mean, not really, no,” Jamie says slowly.

“If there was, you’d tell me, right?”

“It’s just hockey, dude. Our season, the expectations after the moves we made over the summer, losing Lindy… it’s been a lot,” Jamie answers, curling in on himself a bit.

Tyler thinks about it for a second, then goes for it. “And Jordie?”

“Yeah, that’s rough too,” Jamie agrees. “Fucking weird without him here.”

Tyler reaches out to pull him into a hug, and says, “I miss him too. You could’ve told me, if all that was bothering you. Not like either of us has somebody at home to vent to, really. Not like the guys with wives or girlfriends.”

Jamie looks over at him, then down into his lap. “I mean, you never really seemed to be… lacking for company, or whatever.”

Tyler immediately counters with, “You idiot, I’d obviously prefer _your_ company. No chick from a bar is more important than you.”

He looks over at Jamie, finds him already looking back, corners of his mouth drifting upward. Ugh. Adorable. He definitely needs to kiss him, now, bad breath be damned.

He reaches across the couch to back Jamie into the corner, straddling his knees, one hand on the arm and the other on Jamie’s shoulder. He brushes a pretty chaste kiss onto his mouth, lingering for a moment and just savoring the feeling of Jamie’s plush, wet lips against his own. It takes maybe two seconds before Jamie comes to life underneath him, wrapping his arms around Tyler and pulling him close, until they’re chest to chest. Jamie pushes Tyler’s lips apart with his own, finally deepening the kiss, and Tyler’s head goes floaty for a minute or ten, who’s fucking counting. By now he’s totally hard, and it feels like Jamie is too, and they’re all but panting into each other’s mouths. Tyler’s starting to sweat. Too many clothes. He tries to pull away, to take off his T-shirt, but Jamie crushes him back into his chest at the attempt. Wow. Tyler is super into that. Noted.

But he’s still sweaty, and Jamie’s bright red and probably also overheating, so clothes should definitely be coming off. He paws at Jamie’s chest, turns his head to the side and pants out, “Clothes. Off. Please?”

Jamie gives a low chuckle, then puts a hand to Tyler’s cheek to turn his face back toward him. “Yeah. And probably we should move to your room.”

Tyler kind of can’t believe this is happening, but now is not the time for consideration. Now is the time for shimmying backward off of Jamie’s lap, pulling him up by the hand, and leading him to bed. They shuffle toward the stairs, say goodnight to the dogs, and Tyler throws himself onto his bed while Jamie firmly closes the door behind him. He turns back to give Tyler a little smile from the door, and Tyler’s heart gives a squeeze in his chest. He beckons him forward, and Jamie knee-walks the length of the bed until he’s suspended over Tyler. Tyler smiles brightly up at Jamie, who smiles just as brightly back down at him, and Tyler’s mind finally quiets as Jamie’s mouth meets his again.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my poor cow captain's tendency to make me want to cry during post-games, but especially this one:
> 
> https://www.nhl.com/stars/video/postgame-benn-dal-vs-vgk/t-277780834/c-55593703


End file.
